February 2013

A very tight stop prevented our shorting the high that preceded yesterday's $8 plunge, but there is no way I would have risked an open-ended short based on information sent out the night before.  In retrospect, it seems inevitable that the best short you could have asked for in this stock would come off a gap-up opening that should have scared the hell out of anyone standing in its way.  In these situations, camouflageurs should reflect on the fact that the camo technique is perfectly suited to the task of extracting opportunity from the panic and fear of others. I have reproduced a one-minute chart that shows a 'camo' pattern that meets all of our rules and which could have been shorted with a minimum of risk and stress. Isn't time you learned the amazing secrets of Camouflage Trading?  If you've been struggling for years to trade profitably, click here to change your life.

Now we're supposed to believe that U.S. stocks dropped yesterday because Wall Street was somehow "concerned" about Italy's election results. The stock market hasn't been much concerned about anything for four years, so why start now?  Whatever the case, the mainstream media, wrong about nearly everything, is saying that Italian voters' implicit rebellion against the status quo is weighing on U.S. stocks. I'd prefer to think the market plunged yesterday because it was up on Friday, and because violent intraday swings will remain the norm until the topping process is complete.  As I've been shouting here for weeks, this is a perfect place for a major top to occur, not only because there's a cluster of important Hidden Pivot targets at or very near current levels, but because Obamacare is about to crush the life from a painfully narrow recovery that was already starting to sputter out.  And let's not forget that there was that fabulous rally in January -- the kind of bull-trap hubris that the mainstream media loves to run with. We may find out soon just how high TBTB can pile manure.

Some genius bought $90,000 worth of out-of-the-money calls on Heinz shares a day before Buffett tendered for the company, but it looks like he won’t get to collect a dime of the $1.7 million profit the trade produced.  Actually, the trader is a fugitive from justice at the moment, having failed to show up at an SEC hearing last week to explain his astoundingly good timing.  Don’t these guys ever learn?  Buying call options to profit from insider information is like wearing a mechanical holdout device to a card game.  If and when you get caught, which you will, there’s no way to lie your way out of it.  Why do you think the SEC is so keen on prosecuting insider-trading cases?  Convictions come as easy as shooting fish in a barrel, since the paper trail in nearly every instance is so clear and detailed that the trader might as well have presented regulators with a scrapbook celebrating his crime. This perp reportedly bought the call options through a Swiss account managed by Goldman, so he’s not exactly your average Joe. Goldman claims they don’t have “direct access” to his name, and at this point even the regulators don’t know who he is. But you can bet they’ll collar him eventually, notwithstanding Switzerland’s zeal for protecting the identity of its banking customers, even those who deposit such large sums that the money could only have been stolen. When it comes time for the Swiss to do the right thing, we’re betting they’ll cough up the trader’s identity so that the SEC’s investigators can rack up another score. Switzerland No Place to Hide As a put-and-call dealer on the Pacific Exchange years ago, we ourselves were the prey of inside traders operating through brokerage accounts in Switzerland, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and

We're already short the market via a put spread in the Diamonds, but there are other enticing shorts to be attempted near these levels.  I've suggested backing way from the Industrial Average itself, though, since the gratuitous swings have been pretty vicious. This is what we should expect if the stock market is truly a fat short here.

If you used the 14.97 'external' peak to get long via camouflage as I'd advised, you could easily have done so using a 15.36 'buy' signal that triggered on January 23  (60m, A=14.54  on 1/17; B=15.77, C=15.05).  My target now is 18.86, but I'll track a long position only if  I hear from at least two subscribers who are on board.  A second opportunity to enter -- also presumably via camouflage -- would come on a pullback to 15.66, the midpoint pivot of the bullish pattern shown. _______ UPDATE (March 6, 10:20 a.m. EST): Having been early to the party, I will now say that it's a tad overdone. My longstanding target at 18.86 was clear and compelling on the daily chart, and so the short-squeeze opening above it today is undeniably bullish. But as far as Best Buy's turnaround attempt is concerned, the jury is still out. Earnings reported last week were not great, but such is Wall Street's overweaning, greedy obsession for exploiting-to-the-absolute-max any new "story" that is even remotely bullish, that the stock has surged simply because the earnings story wasn't as bad as it could have been.  That's the kind of news that passes for a bullish excuse these days, but it hardly makes the company's shares a fetching buy at these levels.  Keep in mind that what had stirred me up in the first place -- a story in Wired magazine last autumn about a honcho from Starbucks whom Best Buy had hired to shake things up -- is no longer viable. That guy quit after a few months, and it remains to be seen whether his 'legacy', such as it is, will enable Best Buy to be the last man standing as big box stores approach their twilight. From a technical standpoint, today's high

We've been nibbling at GDXJ without much luck as it has fallen toward a potentially important target at 13.15. Let's try something a little different this time, buying with-the-trend. You can do this camo-style, using a b-c pullback from just above the look-to-the-left peak at 16.28 that I've highlighted. This trade will work best if the point B high is formed just above 16.28 --- say, in the range 16.29-16.33.  Be ready to buy-stop your way in, since the opportunity could come up quickly if the pullback occurs in the way I've described.  I'll provide tracking guidance if at least two fills are reported in the chat room. _____ UPDATE (February 26, 12:28 a.m. EST): A gap-up opening was too strong to give us good camouflage cover, so I'll assume no subscribers got aboard at the 16.63 entry point shown in the chart. The "buy" signal is on nevertheless, so your trading bias should be bullish for now. Camouflage traders should look on the 15-min chart for prior peaks to leverage. The nearest of them lie, respectively, at  16.91 and 16.96 (a very subtle one: 2/19 at 10:15 a.m.)

We'll back away from this rabid weasel for now, since the gratuitous ups and downs are getting a little freakish, if not to say fetishistically involved with 14000. This is how we've been expecting a top to be formed all along, since there are ten million of us who are oh-so-eager to get short.  However, if we do so at or near these levels, which seems likely, it'll have to be on the basis of Hidden Pivot targets, of which there are no especially useful ones at the moment.

I thought we'd back off for a few days, but the shorting opportunity shown in the chart is my kind of pattern.  Accordingly, I'll recommend shorting 400 shares at 154.56, two ticks below the target itself, using a 154.62 stop-loss.  If the position goes in-the-black by 40 cents, cover half and substitute an "impulsive stop" based on the one-minute chart. (Note: You can substitute puts for short stock, but be careful not to pay up. This implies buying them when GS is within pennies of the target. I am using a price target-based buy because I expect the pivot to work precisely. Put positions should be tied to the same stop as the stock. ______ UPDATE (11:58 a.m. EST): I had a hunch the 43-cent differential between our target and Friday's closing price might be too delicate to withstand the kind of wholesale thievery that takes place on Monday morning gaps. Anyway, you should have done nothing on the trade, since the opening was above our offer and the stop.  Strictly speaking, you could have gotten short and stopped yourself simultaneously on the first trade of the day.  Now that DaScumballs have succeeded in unloading a truckload of shares this morning on widows and pensioners, we see that They have since allowed GS to relapse to a so-far low of  151.38 -- more than $4 below the day's criminally engineered high.  What a sleazy carnival game our "securities" markets have become!

I'd had my doubts about that 205 target, technically compelling though it be, and they have been assuaged by Goldman's two-day plunge of $9, or about 5.5%. We'll keep our distance from this rabid animal for now, but if it turns mellow for a day or two, it may be possible to squeeze off a short. I have in mind an April or July put butterfly near the 120 strike, so stay tuned.